EUROPEANS AT LHASSA. 345 



foot in the holy city of Lhassa, and in 1845 the Lazarist 

 fathers Gabet and Hue were likewise successful in 

 effecting a lodgment in the capital ; but after the 

 forcible expulsion of the latter the veil was allowed 

 to fall once more, and for sixty years no single rep- 

 resentative of the West has succeeded in disturbing 

 the unruffled calm — as far, that is, as external in- 

 fluences are concerned — which has for the whole of 

 that period brooded over the hierarchy at Lhassa.^ 

 There were those who saw in the Sikkim Convention 

 of 1893 the golden key that was to unlock for them 

 the gates of the forbidden land ; but such sanguine 

 expectation was based on a defective knowledge of 

 the people, and it has been left for the twentieth 

 century to supply the weapon with which to cut the 

 Gordian knot of Tibetan exclusiveness. 



Truth to tell, he would have to be of a peculiar 

 disposition who could see in the barren stony wastes 

 that constitute so large a portion of Tibet the land 

 of any one's desire ; nor indeed can it be said that in 

 the religion of that country is to be found any founda- 

 tion for the weird tales of the supernatural to which 

 it has given rise. Lamaism provides something of 

 interest, it is true ; but it provides much that is 

 sordid as well, as is inevitable in any form of demon- 

 ology.2 And perhaps the best that can be said of it 

 has already been said by the author of the ' Buddhism 



1 Though no European succeeded in reaching Lhassa during this period, 

 it was visited on more than one occasion by native surveyors in the service 

 of the Indian Government. Nain Sing, an intrepid explorer who has added 

 much to our knowledge of the country, was there in January 1866 and 

 again in November 1874, and a semi-Tibetan in the same service led a 

 small party there in March 1872. The babu Sarat Chandra Das was also 

 successful in reaching the capital. 



2 For some account of a personal visit to one of the weird performances, 

 half-serious, half-comic, that are enacted in Tibet, see ' Sport and Politics 

 under an Eastern Sky,' pp. 109-112. 



